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Technical Paper

Seat Belt Entanglement in Rollover Accidents: Physical Evidence and Occupant Kinematics

2008-04-14
2008-01-1237
In rollover accidents, physical evidence of seat belt usage is occasionally difficult to discern. Typically, if a seat belt is used by an occupant in an accident, various seat belt components will display characteristic marks in well-defined locations. These marks are known as “witness marks” or “occupant load marks.” Witness marks in a rollover accident may be faint in comparison to those caused by the occupant restraint forces in high-energy planar collisions. Additionally, in situations where a seat belt buckle is alleged to have unlatched early in a rollover accident, the lack of clear occupant load marks may in some cases be attributed to an alleged “buckle release” that occurred very early in the rollover sequence, so that the seat belt did not sustain loading while in a latched condition.
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